François had bought a volume of sermons at Châlons, which he had carefully concealed from Madame de Beaumanoir, and was dying to read, so he relieved them of his company; and Madame de Beaumanoir, with two chairmen carrying her, set forth, Roger and Michelle walking by the window of the chair, and pointing out the beauties of the little town, lying still and quiet in the moonlight, which cast its mysterious charm over all the scene. When they reached the point where the castle rose before them, its silvered battlements shining in the light of moon and stars, they rested under a tree in a little open place surrounded by gardens. Madame de Beaumanoir, as soon as her chair was set down, put her head out of the window, and entered into a discourse, lasting half an hour or more, concerning a certain moonlight water party at Hampton Court in which the blessed King Charles figured in the usual manner. When she had finally reached the end of her tale, she looked about her. Both of the chairmen were asleep, and Roger and Michelle were nowhere in sight. Madame de Beaumanoir scolded her chairmen until they were broad-awake, but there was no finding the deserters. Those two renegades had walked off, Michelle scarce knowing what she did, except that the moonlight was sweet, and that Roger’s voice was very seductive when he said,—
“There is a very noble tower which can be seen if you will but come a few yards away.”
The few yards away was a considerable distance; and when they found themselves alone, under a hedge, with the gray mass of the old castle looming up before them in dreamlike beauty, the two poor souls forgot everything but each other. They spoke little, but under all Roger said lurked something that told of the passion within him. She was Mademoiselle the Princess d’Orantia, and he was simply Mr. Egremont, a gentleman who had not so much as a pair of boots, except what he might win with his sword. Obviously love should never so much as be thought of between them; but—perversity governs the world. And this vast inequality between them disappeared when they stood alone together in the moonlight, Michelle’s eyes, the only feature she knew not how to control, looking at poor Roger with a world of meaning in their soft depths. Her eyes were dark and deep and changing, like the Dark Pool at Egremont, in which were mirrored night and day, clouds and sunshine, darkness and light; it was never the same for an hour together.
And sweet moments like these must be many before they reached Orlamunde; and after that—well, a campaign was coming; a soldier with his sword could cut his way through a forest of obstacles. So thought Roger.
They were roused from their dream in Paradise by Madame de Beaumanoir’s voice in the distance, cutting the air like a knife. They ran back, like a couple of school children caught playing truant,—the bold Roger Egremont as meek and apologetic as François Delaunay could have been.
“A pretty cavalier you are!” bawled the old lady to Roger on one side of her chair, “leaving me in the lurch like this. I warrant your father, for all his faults, poor man, and he had a plenty, would never have been so rude. Nor would those worthless Sandhills Egremonts have so used me. Let me tell you, young man, you have a great deal to learn yet, nor do I see any great aptitude in you!”
Roger bore this assault on himself and his family with exemplary and silent patience. It was then Michelle’s turn.
“And you, miss, call you this proper to go off for a couple of hours,”—it had been a scant half-hour—“with a gentleman in this manner? What if at Orlamunde—”
“Madam, madam,” implored Roger, “I alone am to blame; this young lady is perfectly innocent.”
“I know it,” snapped Madame de Beaumanoir. “Everybody is always perfectly innocent in cases like this.”